


life was a willow and it bent right to your wind

by switmikan74



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Friends to Lovers, International Call, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Set before and after Kageyama left for Italy, Yamaguchi is a good friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28282752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/switmikan74/pseuds/switmikan74
Summary: Sometimes, Hinata wonders if he is some damsel in distress wearing armors and wielding a sword, chasing after a damned idiotic hero who keeps on stepping six thousand and twenty nine miles away every time he put a foot forward.And sometimes, he thinks he’s just a fool. Lovesick and with quietly unrequited affection in the confines of a neat room at the end of the hallway dorm, far away from Rome.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 10
Kudos: 70





	life was a willow and it bent right to your wind

**Author's Note:**

> I really want to write Evermore themed fanfiction for KageHina.

* * *

_I'm like the water when your ship rolled in that night_   
_Rough on the surface but you cut through like a knife_

.

.

When you’re young and reckless and stupidly optimistic, you think the world is your oyster. It probably is for some—a reality far kinder than anyone could ever dream of, like a freshly baked muffin placed in front of you after patiently waiting with your hunger.

And then you grow older, you think some oysters are rotten and stinky and definitely belong in a garbage can—and you can’t even stomach it in despite your famished state of mind and body and heart.

Hinata is sure that he is between the spectrums of life.

His life right now is not fundamentally rose-colored nor fundamentally unlucky. He is just in the right place, in the middle of something that is quite good and a little bit bad, after putting so much effort to carve a path for himself, just so that it will align to a path that Kageyama has long been presented for being the talented setter that he is.

Paths that should have lined up, intertwined, like some wild crawling ivy vines on an abandoned stone house in an English village Hinata saw once in a documentary he was forced to watch with Pedro back in Brazil.

“Isn’t it a little too early?” If he swallows eight times more than necessary, he thinks, he can will the lead from his belly away and the water in his eyes won’t feel too hefty that he needs to look away from astute blue eyes.

Kageyama shrugs in his nonchalant way and Hinata feels like shouting, cursing, or punching his _former_ setter. Maybe all three at once. Kageyama is so good with making him feel things simultaneously that Hinata wants to claw his chest just to stop the rapid beating of an ugly-shaped organ with the nerve to feel things. His fingers twitch instinctively with the feeling of imploding.

Instead, he tucks his cold hands in his pockets, coils his jersey around him tightly in the hopes that the iciness of the winter won’t seep into his body and adds to the coldness he already feels as they continue their conversation.

“Rome, huh?”

Kageyama shifts his weight from one foot to another. Then he says in a voice flatter than paper on a table, unused and unwrinkled, with the slightest of timbre that Hinata easily picks up, “I’ll call you.”

It’s unfair, is what Hinata whines in his mind.

Because Hinata was eighteen and he did not know the concept of time differences, packing up his bag enthusiastically and moving to the other side of the world with a confidence that lasted him throughout his stay but falls abruptly, shortly, when he discovers he can’t hear Kageyama’s voice through the statics of phone or video calls, only on silver screens flashing on his computer, words undirected to him.

Because Hinata is twenty-five and he is no longer a child that cannot read the atmosphere, he hears a distinctive accusation, childish in its euphemism but an accusation nonetheless.

Hinata turns to point, whine, and refute. However, he stops. His mind stutters. Sort of just pause and short-circuited.

 _Ah_ , Hinata thinks as he let his hand fall to his side, Kageyama is also not a child anymore, isn’t he? He has grown in the two years they were apart, cryptic messages on electronic gadgets keeping them connected, yet Hinata feels twinges, little as they are, and wonders if he missed something incredible and beautiful, a foundation or a learning or whatever that made Kageyama who he is now.

The small smile with barely a stretch settled peacefully on Kageyama’s lips. Hinata wants to see more of it.

“Of… of course, you’ll call me.” He bites his tongue and gulps the things he wanted to say most, “You’ll be a bad best friend if you don’t, Yamayama.”

 _Best friend_ s.

“Calling the teacup black, huh.”

Hinata wants more.

“It’s the pot calling the kettle black, Bakayama!”

So, so much more.

.

.

Like the good _best friend_ that he is, Hinata shows up to the airport three hours before Kageyama’s flight, three hours before Kageyama is even in the premises of NRT. His eyes were red and swollen, having spent a considerable amount of crying last night and the minute he woke up at dawn.

He incessantly texts Kageyama to hurry up whilst praying to any gods that he gets a flat tire somehow, miss his flight, and stay in Japan for one more day. Hinata feels bad afterwards so he texts Kageyama to double check his tire five times in a row until his phone rings the annoying commercial tone Kageyama was in.

Hinata picks up with a sigh in his heart and a cheerful, “Where the hell are you, Lateyama?”

“Why the fuck are you in the airport? You should have dropped by my apartment instead.” Kageyama’s voice is half-sleepy and half-annoyed. Hinata tuts, “And be pulled into packing whatever stuff you forgot to pack? _Pass_.”

There is a minute recess between their exchange in a way that Hinata knows he hit jackpot and Kageyama is muttering lowly, a droning sound Hinata identifies as prideful grumbling. Miwa’s voice rises in the background, a zipping noise breaks through and he hears her yell, “For goodness sake, Tobio, you remember to put your Mikasa ball in your luggage but not your underwear! What will I—”

“Is that Miwa-nee?” Hinata jolts from the world he always created whenever Kageyema is involved and turns to Natsu, whose similarly colored eyes peer curiously at him. He nods, “I was calling Kageyama.”

At the name, Natsu deflates and her lips wobble, “I’m gonna miss Tobio-nii.”

It’s safe to assume that Kageyama snared the Hinatas. Hinata has to flip through the pages of his mind, sift through moments of great influence or source of warmth when Kageyama manages to seep in their lives like some majestic red ink on white summer dress.

First year, autumn, in the back of their house where he invited Kageyama for the first time to practice, Natsu clinging by the edges of the wall, terrified and curious about the tall man with the perpetual frown.

Second year, Saturday afternoons, strolling through the street, Natsu wrapped in Kageyama’s arms, happily chattering away as he held the grocery bags his mother kept piling as she shopped for more.

Third year, everyday after their practice, in the confines of his room, so selfishly desiring Kageyama’s attention on him until Natsu bounds up with the plea to set for her.

Hinata succeeds in opening every drawer and every annex in his mind, basks in the reminiscent glow of youth, and understands how twined Kageyama is in every period of his pubescent growth, so heavily looped that when Hinata learns of romances when he is seventeen, he thinks of Kageyama. Still painfully thinks of Kageyama.

So, in the bustling crowd where his voice can be lost, he pulls a key to every drawer and annex of his heart and wrenches them open, decants every ounce of heartstring out of his chest and unto his tongue and admits, “I will too.”

Natsu does not say anything. She comes to him with an open arm and tugs him close. Hinata sniffles but does not break. He cried so hard at dawn that his eyes still sting dry.

Maybe, later when Kageyama has taken a seat on his airplane and took off, he’ll let himself bleed tears again.

.

.

Kageyama arrives in the NRT one hour and a half before he leaves. The whole Karasuno gang has already settled nicely within that people probably assume that they’ll be leaving the country as well.

Sugawara is crying the moment he sees Kageyama. He embraces him tightly like a mother watching her only son travel far away from her. Daichi pats him comfortingly whilst warning Tanaka from jumping in the embrace.

Tsukishima, like the salty ocean that he is, is not present in the farewell. He is burrowed in his office with multiple documents in his right hand and a schedule for practice in his left. Yamaguchi represents them both like usual.

“Tsukki says to be careful.”

Yamaguchi’s ability to sugarcoat the nasty things Tsukishima says is truly commendable. Hinata bets that it’s _‘be careful not to get mugged the moment you get off the plane, not that I expect much’_ rather than the whitewashed well wishes, a string of vibrated sounds that hid Tsukishima’s well mellowed progress. Kageyama only nods confusedly, always the socially awkward fool that he is.

When the greetings and the crying subsided into a lull, Hinata takes his queue and grabs Kageyama’s hand. If this was a movie or a sappy romance novel, this is the part where the protagonist confesses his love and, by some miracle, makes the love interest stay with the magnitude of his sincerity, throwing their dreams and better careers away for a single replaceable man with a penchant for selfish regression.

But this is not a movie or a sappy romance novel, or a cringe worthy fanfiction written by a young adult in the cusp of her loneliness. This is reality. Hinata’s reality.

“We’re going to be eight hours apart. So if you’re going to call, make sure it’s twelve in the afternoon there in your time zone. Or message me first before you call if it’s not yet twelve or even pass that. I’ll do the same.”

Kageyama squeezes the hand that is holding his.

“Your eyes are red.”

Tactless, that he is. Hinata flushes but his eyes remain fixated, meeting Kageyama’s bluest stare. He will etch it in his mind, this very moment, the galaxy blue hue that reflects under fluorescent light, how deep and unsettling they are with the weight of their stare, how at this very second, they’re staring only at him.

“It’s amber, Bakayama.”

Kageyama purses his lips instead of snarling. Elegant tips brush under his swollen eyes, almost as if he is kissing them in his own way. Hinata freezes. He can’t let his heart jump out every time a stick of hope dangles in front of him.

“I’ll call you at twelve then.”

Hinata does not know he is crying again until he is wrapped by stronger arms, cradled into his chest as if to hide him away, and felt the blue jacket Hinata gifted Kageyama two summers ago dampen underneath his cheeks.

For a moment, they’re the only two people in the world and Hinata, yearning lovesick Hinata, does not want to let go.

But he did.

.

.

Sometimes, Hinata wonders if he is some damsel in distress wearing armors and wielding a sword, chasing after a damned idiotic hero who keeps on stepping six thousand and twenty nine miles away every time he put a foot forward.

And sometimes, he thinks if he’s just a pathetic fool. Infatuated and with quietly unrequited affection in the confines of a neat room at the end of the hallway dorm, far away from Rome.

.

.

In their break in between their practice match against the Red Falcon, Bokuto drops beside Hinata, his voice is unbridled with a softness that only a fond heart can muster out of their courageous chest and into the ears of their loving partner, brazen, unabashed, and contented with the way it connects them in an intricate art that lovers paint together.

“I will see you soon, Keiji.”

Hinata feels like an intruder. So, he pretends to forget something in their locker, strides away to Atsumu, whose smirking lips is directed to an annoyed Sakusa, passes the two with a chirpy greeting, and moves out the gym that smells of salonpas, sweat, and volleyball dreams.

He opens his locker and checks his phone for the thousandth time. The disappointment cripples him. Clenching his teeth and fisting his hands, he throws a tantrum and curses Kageyama.

It’s been a week since but there were no calls from him. Hinata tried last Wednesday but all he got is a cold _the number you had dialed_ and what can he do with that if he presses it eight more times and the same voice makes his belly swirl in unnecessary worry for a nonchalant man he lo—

“Bakayama. Bakayama. Bakayama.”

Hinata puts his phone back helplessly. Somewhat ashamed of himself for desperately trying to matter enough to be the first recipient of an international call from Italy.

.

.

Five years ago, Pedro dragged him into a bar on his twentieth birthday. The premise was loud and bright with mirror balls—Hinata remembers the mirror balls specifically because he has been observing the area more than dancing with the crowd.

When he was twenty, he lost his first kiss to a man he did not remember anymore. But that time was a lucid liberation attempt to forego his despairing feelings that fill his lungs with stones and cottons and hopes and fears. So, he remembers the sensation he has in losing something he should have given away back in the summer of their sophomore year.

The man with the brown hair (or was it black?) sat next to him with whiskey under his breath. He told him he is twenty-six even without asking and, like the social butterfly he is, entertains the conversation with his clumsy Japanese tongue that spoke foreign words he learnt in his stay, his ulterior motive bubbling through his glance at the stranger’s lips while the back of his mind shouted at him to surrender and run.

The stranger smiled, leaned in openly, and with the little brain cells that he has, Hinata let things go awry. The kiss was short, brief, and terrifyingly disgusting.

“Was that your first?” He laughed kindly.

Hinata nodded after he sipped from the cocktail Pedro ordered for him. The stranger waved for a bartender and placed an order for two, slid the vodka towards him, and said, “They say vodka helps with first love breakups.”

.

.

It’s not going to help, Hinata discovered the next day when his head was pounding and he felt like something had been pulled out of his belly.

Yet, he still drinks it even after years later when the night gets lonelier. _Especially_ when the night gets lonelier and sleeps elude him, makes him think of his first love, of his second love, of his third. And isn’t it unequivocally miserable when all of those places in his too big heart are occupied by a single man?

.

.

The phone finally rings Kageyama’s godawful commercial flat voice when Hinata is tying his shoes, the only other people in the room are Meian and Wan-san, and they witness Hinata’s quick reflexes outside of the court as he scrambles for a tiny electronic device like it is the answer to every problem of the world.

“H-hello?” Tiny breathing gasps exit his mouth as he grips the phone near his left ear. It was silent for a minute, the crinkling of static rings louder than his teammates’ conversation, louder than his own heartbeat. Hinata feels suspended.

“Hinata.” And then the feeling of flying is replaced by the feeling of falling, Hinata nearly screams. Instead he grasps the phone tighter and replies as nonchalantly as he could, “Took you long enough to figure the time difference.”

Hinata knows Kageyama the way old people know every myth of their town. He figures, or misleads himself to believe, that Kageyama simply forgot that they are both in two different continents and that time zones exist, something he had reminded him of before he left.

It’s easier to lie to yourself than suffer the dreadfully stabbing pain that the truth brings. Hinata knows of this all too well.

“Kageyama? Are you still there?” Hinata hears a grunt of affirmation. He almost wilts at the brevity of his reply. But this is Kageyama Tobio, the younger Kageyama whose mouth has chewed more than it ever talked.

“The gym…” Kageyama tries, “The gym here is bigger.”

Hinata smiles, the two weeks of waiting has ended. He can finally breathe normally again without having to force the air into his lungs.

“That’s good.”

.

.

Mid-August in their sophomore year, Kageyama visited them in their home after a thorough coaxing from him. They have the house to themselves. Natsu was with their mother in Kyoto, visiting their grandfather. They spent their day the way they always do: playing volleyball.

Under the translucent glow of the setting sun, Kageyama seemed like a celestial creature that roamed the inky night with his beautiful raven hair and iridescent blue eyes. Hinata drops the ball Kageyama has set. Kageyama looked at him with an annoyed expression but the words he prepared to shout got tangled up when he met his eyes.

Hinata still wonders what Kageyama had seen then for him to pause and be drawn. The setter held his cheeks all too suddenly that Hinata had to catch his heart from going out his chattering mouth and leaned in with a purpose.

If this was a movie or a sappy romance novel, Kageyama was supposed to kiss him there and they would have lived happily ever after.

But this was not a movie or a sappy romance novel. And perhaps his life was a crappy cringe worthy fanfiction written by a young adult in the cusp of their loneliness—perhaps, he was that lonely young adult. Because Hinata does the most immature thing, a cliché twist to elongate the suffering of the protagonist to portray the dramatic turns readers had been eating since literature has been invented.

Hinata cowered.

“Wow, Bakayama, your bangs are so ugly.”

Thus, the cusp of stupidity soared higher than Icarus, burned, fell, and sank into the deepest darkest pit of the oceans he would have swam for Kageyama if he was just braver when the matters of the heart came into play.

.

.

When one is young, one has a different concept of regret than a weary pondering adult looking through a nostalgic telescope at a certain page in their life.

Hinata is now twenty-three and a half and he does the most banal thing in the world when you're in love and regretful, he wonders.

He wonders the if's he long buried away in the back of his mind, veiled with pretense and natural enthusiasm that bleeds on his lips like the stained glass on a chapel he once visited.

He wonders because it is addicting somewhat to imagine in his head what could have become if he had been dauntless and offered his heart years ago without qualms of ruining their friendship, without fear of falling off each other’s lives due to his foolish boldness marred with his selfish desire to be something more.

Hinata gets his metaphorical white board, divides them into three categories. Good. Bad. Absolutely Terrible.

_Good: Kageyama reciprocates and they live happily ever after._

_Bad: Kageyama rejects him and continues being his friend._

_Absolutely Terrible: Kageyama rejects him and slips out of his life, his presence unbidden afterwards._

Hinata hates the Absolutely Terrible. His mind dwells half the time on it, the other half, the one with hope coiled around his neck, lingers on the Good. And a tiny portion of his, since he is bad in Math anyway, breaks at the Bad.

He can't imagine a life without Kageyama. But he knows it will be truly wretched to watch the love of his life takes his heart and return it for wear, permitted to stay in his life but never allowed to cross the platonic line drawn between them like a barricade tape to deter unwarranted assuming greedy intruders, the yellow demarcation of friendship that forbids Hinata from wanting and taking more.

Hinata is reminded again on why he stopped his prattling mouth from professing his endless affections.

To him, he is in the fourth unseen category, the one that is specially made for cowards like him. The Worst.

.

.

Hinata is not one for scheduled routines. He is a free spirit. He does not like writing the things he has to do. And perhaps it is one of the reasons he mostly forgets things until the very last moment. But he does not change that, not until it is seven in the evening, sharp in its reminder, he picks his phone the moment it rings.

“Have you eaten?” It is midday in Rome and Hinata can’t help but ask every time once they settle in the comfort of their seven-twelve magic.

“I had eaten with Flavio and Luca already.”

“That’s good. You shouldn’t skip meals.”

Kageyama never does but Hinata sometimes pretends that Kageyama is reckless enough to sacrifice eating and overwork himself so he can sweep in and be the caring _best friend_ that can chide him into doing something.

“Are you going home now?”

“We will be eating out for a team dinner.”

Kageyama falls silent as he usually does when he thinks. Hinata waits for him to reply as he usually does for Kageyama.

“I swear I won’t get drunk. I’m designated to drive, anyway.”

“Okay.” Kageyama says finally, “Okay. You can drink two cocktails. That’s it.”

There are times when one’s subconscious desire overlaps with the conscious mind. A phenomenon known sometimes as parapraxis. Internal desire melding into the tongue and slipping away before he can reel it in.

Hinata chuckles, “What are you? My boyfriend?”

It slides out faster than his brain can connect to his tongue. They both lapse into a quiet threatening shift. Hinata fumbles with his words, “Anyway! Anyway, I will text you later when I get home. See you, Kageyama.”

.

.

Hinata drinks two cocktails as promised.

.

.

People would say teens don’t know a thing about love. Maybe, they were unto something when they said that. Or maybe, they were young once, in love with the thought of being in love, never knowing the consequences of opening their chest and letting others enter and make a mess out of their strings until the only thing they were left with are memories of youthful folly.

Hinata was all of seventeen when he had set his ball down for a second and discovered that there must be a reason why Juliet stabbed herself when Romeo died. That reason must be a deep aching that rumbles within until even the tips of his hair are twitching. That reason must be the simplest one.

Modern humans would call it foolishness. They were young and reckless. What do they know? How could they throw their lives away so easily when they have a future separate from one another? One that would guarantee they both live.

But Kageyama was sitting beside him after practice with a silence that envelops them serenely. And he was watching every move the setter takes, the shallow breath that rises his chest, the exhales, the slow sleepy blinks—once, twice, and then yawning hideously.

Hinata cannot help but think _he is certainly beautiful_.

Hinata paused and for awhile he contemplated the strange creeping feeling that surrounds him whenever he is with Kageyama. He was not sure what it was before but there is a terrifying amount of it— _too much_ has always been a culture for both of them.

Perhaps, Romeo and Juliet were the same. They felt too much of everything for each other that they chose death over the thought of eternal separation, leaving the other wondering what could have been, drinking wine at an alcove as they hide from their loveless marriage, and longing for the love of the dead whose affections were scorned for being too fledgling.

 _Oh,_ Hinata thought when he put the puzzle together three weeks after his secret appreciation of the setter’s beauty, _that is the reason_.

Because Hinata will stab himself with a knife too if he was in Juliet’s shoes, he realized.

.

.

**From: Hinata-kun**

**[12:43AM]** Yamaguchiiii help me pls omg omg

 **[12:43AM]** Yamaguchiiii help me pls omg omg

 **[12:43AM]** Yamaguchiiii help me pls omg omg

 **[12:44AM]** Yamaguchiiii help me pls omg omg

**From: Yamaguchi**

**[06:57AM]** were u drunk?

**From: Hinata-kun**

**[6:58AM]** r u free? its rlly ergent

**From: Yamaguchi**

**[7:17AM]** I can’t go to Osaka, Hinata. Can we talk it over video call?

.

.

Hinata finds comfort with the familiar face of his friend. There is always a sense of belongingness and warmth with Yamaguchi that is different from his own. A homey mark, like a time capsule dug out the back of a gym, bookmarked in the remembrance of their high school days. Yamaguchi carries them in his kinder eyes and gentler smile.

“I said something I shouldn’t have.” Without much preamble, he confesses. Yamaguchi softens even more like the mother he was to every teammate they ever had, “What do you mean, Hinata?”

“I… I….”

“Is this about Kageyama-kun?”

Hinata has always known that Yamaguchi is discerning, that whatever he may try to hide, the flicker of Yamaguchi’s wise eyes would pinpoint and pierce through. And, Hinata has always been a bad liar.

“Yes.”

It takes about a minute for him to gather his thoughts and thirty minutes to splash it all over Yamaguchi. Years of repressed bottled emotions that are _too much_ creates an image of a young child, one that picks blueberries and oranges, presents them all too cheerily to someone and says: _look, look, everything that I have is yours for the taking_.

“I don’t deserve all of these, Hinata.” Yamaguchi smiles kindly and if they were together, he would have cupped his cheeks so warmly that Hinata might have bawled his eyes out, “Kageyama does.”

.

.

**From: Bakayama**

**[12:18PM]** let’s talk tomorrow.

.

.

Because he knows Kageyama the way birds know the season is changing, he expects it as much.

Hinata sees the message when he is safely tucked in his bed, his conversation with Yamaguchi ringing in his head in a horrendous loop of prickling and pulling and reproaching. Yamaguchi is right because he is mature and he once handled his affections for his best friend with ripe determination that Hinata can only envy.

So, he does the stupid thing. Hinata is twenty-five and three-fourths. He is an adult male with a greedy heart and a penchant for running away from his feelings. Today, he skids to a halt and presses the call button.

“No, let’s talk today.” Hinata says, his hand pressing against his temple. He winces at the silence. Kageyama always has the presence of an elephant in the room. So peculiarly brilliant that you would want to pay him attention, even in his most silent moment.

“What…” Kageyama starts unsurely, “What else do we need to talk about?”

 _A lot of things_ , Hinata’s first thought as he brushes his fringe from his face. _About us,_ is his second taunting one that makes his fingers tremble.

 _I was wondering if I have a chance,_ is his third marring line that takes him back.

.

.

He is seventeen, his heart is heavy with the realization that bloomed from the deepest nook of his chest, and he watches Kageyama from the corner of his eyes, counts the ways he could make an excuse just to hold his pretty hands, and looks away when Kageyama stares back.

He is twenty, clinging on the wrong lips so he can survive the scars he inflicted himself for being mum about the easiest and most complicated intangible wonder in the world, yet his mind still sings for the boy with galaxy eyes and a perpetual frown on the other side, wishing for him to steal him away from the terrible mistakes he is making to delude himself with false sense of liberty.

He is twenty-five and three-fourths, a professional volleyball player in Japan, still chasing the same man he thought he would forget if time played its card well.

.

.

“What do you think of me?”

The question hang like a hook, a silver gleam underneath the water that beckons stupid aquatic creatures. Kageyama bites it scornfully, “An idiot. A shrimp who needs to work on how to set more precisely. And I think you should let your hair grow back again.”

Hinata knits his brow together, “That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

Kageyama says it with an exhausted sigh, like he is already tired after talking for a minute. Hinata leans into his voice, “What do you want from me? Honestly.”

Hinata waits, as he always does, for Kageyama.

And if this was a novel or a crappy romance movie, or even a godforsaken fanfiction written by lonely young adults, Hinata hopes.

“Is it okay?” The sound of Kageyama’s voice is weak but there is a significant amount of _too much_ in it. Hinata swallows, “Okay to what?”

“Is it okay to want more from you?”

.

.

Kageyama is sixteen and the translucent glow of the August sunset envelops the boy with the sunrise eyes in a way that draws him in and makes him lose his breath, a parapraxis of his heart to his mind in admittance of what he deemed dangerous, his hands on his cheeks, his eyes meeting fearful ones, a drumming sound of _wow, Bakayama, your bangs are so ugly_ stops him from whatever he was supposed to be doing.

He is eighteen, sitting on the hardwood of the gym one September night, his mind is reeling forward and his body is aching, and everything that brings him reprieve and chaos is faraway in the distant land of Brazil yet lingers on him like a calming exhaustion—and he thinks what would have been if he was there in the airport, pulling him into a tight hug—wonders if he will even let go if he did; he shakes himself awake as Hoshiumi presses a cold tumbler against his cheeks, a knowing look on his amused eyes and says _you could text him, you know_ —and he didn’t. 

He is twenty-five, a phone in his hand, talking to the boy with sunrise eyes as Flavio pushes his curious teammates away from him, and he finally breaches the demarcation he set for himself, a line that tightly shackled him away from the musings that would ruin the very thing he wants to preserve most.

.

.

Hinata quivers underneath his blanket. He is twenty-five and three fourths, an adult professional volleyball player, and he feels as if Elizabeth Browning is writing poetry about him and the stupidly beautiful boy in Rome.

“Yes,” He breathes out, all at once his feelings pour over a single word that is universally understandable in any language they would learn, so he repeats it, “Yes.”

“Good.” There is a sort of breathy laugh that is so unlike Kageyama that Hinata balls into himself and savors its sound. Hinata remembers when he is twenty, when he is seeking liberty from the weight of his feelings for the boy—and wonders if this, right here, where he is softly falling like a feather in the air rather than a rock rolling down a cliff, is true liberation.

.

.

They are both twenty-five and perhaps, the world really is their oyster.

-Fin-

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Leave some kudos and reviews! <3


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